Homecoming
by intercircles
Summary: Mai's adjusted to normal life as she attends university. However, when a certain man named Naru and paranormal happenings find their way back to her, Mai realizes that normal doesn't suit her.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own ghost hunt

* * *

 **00: Night**

Mai's eyes opened wide as she sat up, tears streaming down her face. The 19-year-old was shaking to no extent, her brain flashing vivid images of the alarming scenes she had seen.

 _It was just a nightmare,_ the brunette reminded herself as she wrapped her arms around her body. She still felt as though she was in a car trunk, trying to escape the pain and isolation.

Looking around her dark room, her eyes landed on her clock - it was already 5 a.m. Mai struggled in getting up and walking to her bathroom, although it was right across from her bed.

Turning the lights on, she squinted and her head began pounding. As she turned on the tap, Mai stared at her reflection. Her eyes were red, her tears had dried on her face.

She splashed water on her face, removed her t-shirt from the rack that hung behind the bathroom door and placed it over her head.

The seemingly calmer girl walked back to her room and opened her closet. Grabbing her jacket and keys, Mai headed out the door.

She had two hours to kill until parapsychology class.

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Author's note - This is my first fan fiction so my writing skills and ideas aren't the best but I hope you can review and give some feedback on how I can make it better, and if you have any ideas you want me to include feel free to share!


	2. Chapter 2

**01: Surprise**

"Good morning Mai you're looking beautiful as always." Yasuhara laughed and took a sip from Mai's coffee as he placed his belongings on the table and sat down.

Mai rolled her eyes, "Very funny Yasu. Try to be more discreet with the sarcasm next time."

They both knew she looked terrible, her dark circles were almost blending in with Yasu's black hoodie.

After almost a year at university, Mai didn't care to look after her appearance, nor did she have the time.

She had been juggling four classes, the work that came with it, and a part-time job. And then you add nightmares to the mix, making it so she couldn't sleep properly either. Mai's life was just _great_.

"I barely finished the paper because I was busy skyping Hana all night." Yasu sighed and rested his chin on his hand, "She's just too beautiful and needy!"

"That's great Yasu your single friend over here _really_ wants to hear about your love life. Tell me more." Mai glared at the dark haired boy as she drank her coffee.

At first, she had been happy for her best friend and his now one year girlfriend, but hearing about his romantic rendezvous every time they met had slowly begun to irritate her.

"Well someone woke up on the wrong side of their bed today." Yasu began to take out his laptop as he continued,

"Did you hear? We're having a guest speaker come today. I'm so glad I won't have to see that old man's bald head today. 'Yathuhara be quiet' 'Yathuhara stay after class'. No matter how many times I tell him it's Yasuhara he never listens but he always seems to hear me snack all the way in the back of the class so he can tell me to shut up, what a coincidence that is!"

 _Does he ever breathe when he talks?_ Mai smiled at her friend as she watched him rant.

Throughout the course of three years, he didn't change much except for gaining some muscles and interests in girls.

When she first met Yasu she didn't really think they would be best friends. But here they are three years later, spending almost every day together. They knew everything about each other and at this point they were practically the same person.

Mai hadn't changed much herself. Appearance-wise, her hair being shoulder length was the only noticeable change. She had grown in figure too, not that she showed it off much.

Nowadays Mai was quieter, she enjoyed time to herself when she could.

Her nightmares were the only reason she didn't like being alone, they happened so frequently that she stopped wondering about the contents.

But what she saw last night was different. Experiencing Gene's painful death had shaken her up. But most of all, she wanted to cry for Gene, for having to die in such a way.

She didn't quite understand why she had seen his death. Perhaps he wanted her to know about what had happened.

After all, there had been many questions left unanswered after her former boss left for England.

Mai snapped away from her thoughts as she felt Yasu shaking her.

"Mai! Look." The boy exclaimed.

"What now Yas-"

Her eyes widened when she realized what he was pointing at.

* * *

Oliver Davis was not pleased, to say the least.

His mother had decided to approve of him guest speaking at a university without his consent. She had also insisted that he do it no matter what.

Which is what brought him to Japan one month ahead of schedule, and he hated it when things didn't go as planned.

Walking down the hall with Lin, Naru failed to notice the eyes that had been staring, and the people that had begun to move out of the way.

"I suggest you not glare like that when you're doing the lecture." Lin smirked at Naru as they walked in.

Naru relaxed his eyes, not realizing that he was glaring.

He placed his bag on the desk and scanned the room.

There was a very large group of students sitting in front of him.

Majority of them hinted they did not want to be here. Some girls had begun to eye him in a way that seemed almost inappropriate.

His eyes landed on the familiar faces situated in the back of the room.

There he saw his former researcher and assistant staring at him in shock. He didn't blame them, he was equally surprised to see them as they were him.

His eyes stopped to look at Mai - her hair that was tied in a high messy bun, her sweater that seemed like it would fall off her shoulder any second and her seemingly skinnier form.

After observing her for what seemed to be a second, Naru realized that his former assistant had grown in many ways.

She didn't seem like the bubbly teenager that had worked under him. Her eyes were calmer and didn't suggest the furor they did before.

However, he was almost...relieved to see that she had looked at him the same way she did before.

The blue-eyed man tore his eyes from hers and snapped back to the reality that he was standing in front of 300 people.

He introduced himself to the class, "My name is Kazuya Shibuya and I will be speaking about symptoms of extrasensory perception."

* * *

Author's note - Mai and Naru are about to meet again! It's a little hard for me to write in Naru's perspective but I'm trying my best to display his personality. Yasu's kind of like the comic relief in this story but he's also an important character. You'll be meeting the rest of SPR soon! Feedback is always welcome! Thank you for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

**02: Meeting**

Mai couldn't focus.

She sat at the table, chin propped up on her arm. She had been typing down just about everything she heard, not trying to comprehend the content like she normally would.

Perhaps it had been due to lack of sleep, but that never affected her before. Sometimes she came into class with no sleep at all, but her focus was definitely better than right now.

Her eyes kept wandering to Naru. During the three years he was gone, Mai had made countless efforts to lessen her thoughts of him. She even took a longer route to university because had she taken the shorter one, she would have to pass by her former workplace.

It was beyond her understanding how he could shatter her efforts so effortlessly. _Ironic._

She felt like a teenager again, but...it didn't seem all bad. After all, she had been happiest working at SPR with her "family".

Mai was so deep in thought she didn't notice the rest of the students that had stood and left the classroom one by one. Her best friend had stood as well and smugly stared down at her,

"Wow Mai, you might as well write 'I love Naru' on your forehead."

The brunette smacked Yasu and opened her mouth to retort when Yasu mused,

"All he has to do is breathe and all the ladies come flocking over."

Mai knew he was referring to the group of girls at the front who had been making solid efforts to flirt with Naru. Why was she not surprised? The man was walking art.

Yasu grabbed Mai's hand and walked over to the front right when the girls left due to Naru's cold attitude.

"Hey big boss and Lin! Long time no see. What brings you here?" Her excited friend asked.

"The lecture of course." Her former boss replied pompously.

Mai rolled her eyes, _of course._

She smiled to greet Lin who had been standing silently at the side, and he nodded in return.

"So are you guys staying in Japan?" The brunette asked awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

"Where would we be staying then, Mai?" He gave her his infamous 'you're and idiot look' and Mai couldn't help but smile.

"You know that's not what I meant." Mai retorted.

She wouldn't call him Naru if he didn't respond in such a way. She had missed it - his blunt, witty replies. She had missed _him_.

Yasu laughed, putting his arm around Mai's shoulder. "We should all eat together or something. It's been a while."

No one had time to reply because the light bulbs suddenly broke and the lights went out.

Mai jumped, followed by Yasu.

"W-what just happened?" The bewildered 19-year olds eyed each other.

"We have to get out of here first." Naru strode to the door, and the other three followed.

As if on cue, all the door's in the room slammed shut. Naru reached for the door knob, "It's locked."

"So...we're stuck?" Mai questioned. The brunette internally groaned, the entire situation was eerie. She didn't have a good feeling about this.

Naru deadpanned, "That would be obvious Mai."

Mai fumed, "It was just a question!"

"Guys is it just me or is it suddenly really cold?" Yasu shivered, averting Mai's attention from her narcissistic ex-boss. Mai began to shiver as well, even though she was wearing a sweater.

"Yeah it's cold...don't tell me this is a spirit's doing?" Mai was troubled. If they really were dealing with a spirit then things just got one hundred times harder.

"It's a possibility." The indigo-eyed man replied calmly.

"I'll call for help." Lin pulled out his cell phone. Mai jumped, forgetting the Chinese man was standing behind her.

Before Lin could dial, his phone was precipitously thrown to the other side of the room. The green-haired man sighed, "That phone was expensive."

It was most definitely a spirit.

"What do we do now?" Mai asked.

She was trying to hold herself back from suggesting to break open the door because they would most likely end up paying for the damage. It seemed Naru felt the same way.

"We could bang on the door..." Yasu offered.

Naru, who was standing closest to the door, raised his arm to do so. His arm was flung back as a result.

" _YOU'LL PAY!_ " A female voice roared, and a desk was thrown at the board.

The four teenagers and adults looked at each other, wide-eyed. Lin raced to grab a chair and threw it at the window, watching the glass shatter.

"Come out this way." Lin gestured the rest of the group towards the window.

Mai's leg tripped over the window frame as she tried to bring it out. Her body landed on a piece of glass that scraped the side of her arm.

"Clumsy as ever." Mai looked up to see Naru smirking down at her.

 _D_ _amn he looks good,_ Mai felt a blush creeping up on her cheeks.

She snapped out of it and glared at the 20-year old man and was about to retort when she felt sharp pain in her arm.

"Mai, you're bleeding." Naru stated as he hovered over the brunette.

"I'm fine, I just need to put a bandaid over it." Mai dusted ff her clothes whilst being supported by Yasu. She looked over at Naru, was he...glaring?

She had no time to contemplate because the dean of the university himself showed up at the sight of the mess.

"What is going on?!" He exclaimed, obviously angry at the view of broken windows.

"We were locked in, the lights had gone out on their own. We had to break open the windows to get out. You wouldn't happen to know anything about this would you?" Naru eyed the short bald man and watched him as he coughed and opened his mouth.

"Would you like to come into my office for some tea?"

* * *

"You must be the man in charge of Shibuya Psychic Research. I heard you were conducting a lecture here." The dean stretched out his arm and shook his hand with Naru's.

"Yes, that's correct. Could you explain the phenomenon occuring?" Naru took a sip from his tea and crossed his legs.

"We tried to keep it as quiet as we could because it would cause an uproar with the students and create unnecessary rumors but seeing as how something like this happened I guess it's not right to stay silent." The older man drank his tea with a bitter look on his face and continued,

"So far it's been little things like books flying on their own, lights flickering and noises coming from empty classrooms. But there was an incident where our previous librarian fell down the stairs - she claimed she was dragged down and quit her job. We didn't think much of it but the same ended up happening with our new librarian." He looked over at Naru with pleading eyes,

"Can you help?"

"We can. We'll come in tomorrow, please spare a room for us to put our equipment in." Naru placed his tea on the table and stood, the other three who had been sitting with him, followed.

"Thank you very much." The short man replied as the four left the room.

Naru turned to look at Yasu and Mai, "You two are welcome to help, we can use extra arms."

Mai was surprised and happy at the same time. The thought that she would get to work for Naru again brought over a wave of nostalgia.

"Sure big boss! We'll come, right Mai?" Yasu placed his arm around Mai's shoulder and winked.

Mai eyed Yasu, confused at his antics. He was never usually this touchy-feely with her, and Mai had this strange voice in the back of her head that told her it was to make her ex-boss jealous.

"Yeah, of course!" Mai smiled at the two men standing in front of her. However, her smile suddenly turned into a frown.

"Wait a minute...what time is it?" Mai had been so caught up in everything going on that she totally forgot.

"It's 3:30." Lin replied.

The brunette's eyes widened. She was late for work.

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Author's note - I had this chapter done for a couple days but I couldn't get myself to post it because I wanted to fix the plot a little. I hope you guys like it! Thank you to the person that recommended I make my chapters longer, I definitely added more detail into this. Feedback is always welcome.


	4. Chapter 4

**03: Elation**

Mai sighed.

Working overtime was definitely not her forte. Her manager had asked her to stay behind for another three hours because a worker called in sick. However, men had constantly been giving her inappropriate looks and dropping things to get her to pick them up because she was wearing a skirt. She felt sorry for the workers that had to deal with this on a daily.

"Mai, could you take out the trash?" Her manager called out from the other side of the room.

"Sure thing!" She smiled back, anything to get away from these men.

She rolled up her sleeves and picked up the garbage bags from the trash cans. As she walked down the hall, she couldn't suppress her excitement for tomorrow. It had been so long since she worked on a case, and even longer since she worked with Naru.

After he had left, Mai took on small cases for people who had been referred to her by her friends or previous clients. They were always little cases that only required persuasion to get the spirit to move on.

Mai opened the door to the back, letting it close behind her as she hauled the trash and placed it to the side. She whipped her head to the side where she saw a group of men approaching her.

"Hey there pretty lady!" A man yelled out, howls of laughter following behind him. As the men approached Mai, she moved back in hopes to reach the door knob. Just as she was about to grab it, one of the larger men grabbed hold of both her arms and twisted them.

"Play with us sweetheart, while I'm being nice." The large man spat on the ground. Mai was disgusted at his attitude and for a split second, her anger got the best of her, forgetting the danger she was in.

"I would never do anything with you. Let me go _now_." Mai glared at the man, but then released her eyes when she came back to the reality that it wasn't just _one_ man she was dealing with.

Why did she have to run her mouth? She was in deep shit. Mai regretted not taking self-defence classes when she had the chance.

"What did you say?!" The man, obviously angry at her words, abruptly slammed her back into the wall. Mai squinted from the pain and felt light headed. Suddenly everything became a blur and the tight grip on her arm was loosened.

Instead of the large man who was previously there, Mai saw a familiar face standing above her. She thought she was dreaming.

* * *

"I don't care what she says Ayako! Mai is not working at that restaurant anymore, period." Mai turned in her half-awake state at the sound of her name. Was that bou-san?

"You can't just decide things like that. It's not your call!" That was most definitely Ayako. Mai decided to get up, not wanting her parent figures to argue any more than they already were. As she rose, she grabbed onto her head due to its immense pounding.

"Mai!" They both yelled at the same time and rushed over to her.

"What happened to me?" The confused girl looked up and was surprised to see Naru sitting in a chair in what seemed to be a hospital room.

"Naru found you being harassed by those men and brought you here after you hit your head. What would you have done if he wasn't there Mai?!" Monk scolded her.

"I would have gotten out of it somehow! I've done it before." Mai really didn't want to hear this right now, especially with the banging in her head.

"This has happened before?" Naru was suddenly glaring at Mai.

"Yeah..it has." The young girl was flustered at his sudden question and didn't know how to react.

"Yet you continued to work there, denying your safety." Naru stared her down. Mai was taken aback at his sudden sternness.

"Mai, you're not working at that restaurant anymore, I don't care what you think." Bou-san declared. Mai's eyes widened,

"I can't stop working there! How else am I supposed to pay for university?" Mai understood her father-figure's concern but the pay at the restaurant was above average, and she was the only person responsible for making the money she needed. Bou-san and Ayako had offered to give her money but the amount she needed was quite a bit, and she didn't want to burden them with it.

"Find another job, Mai." The younger of the two men stated, not back down from their argument. He made it sound so easy. It was already late March, which meant majority of the permanent jobs were already taken care of. Even if she were to look for another job, she would still need to work at her current workplace in the meantime.

The pain in Mai's head got stronger and Mai bent over to bear it. Ayako rushed over with painkillers and helped my swallow them. The older woman turned to glare at the two men,

"Can you guys do this another time? The girl got slammed into a wall for god's sake." Ayako sighed, "Men, I swear."

Mai grinned at Ayako's remark. She was relieved that Ayako saved her from the obviously one-sided conversation. Bou-san never failed to worry when it came to anything related to Mai.

"You need to stop worrying so much Monk. Don't think I forgot about the time you and Yasuhara took her to the emergency room over a cut on her finger." Ayako deadpanned. Mai laughed as she recalled their panicking states.

As if on cue, Yasu made his entrance,

"Mai! I was so worried. What happened are you okay?" Mai watched her friend rush over to her bedside and sit on the chair next to her, hugging her tightly.

"I'm _fine_ I really am. Stop worrying so much." Mai smiled, she appreciated all of her friends' care but she really didn't like seeing them so anxious. Yasu released Mai, letting her breathe.

"Fine, but monk, Ayako and I are going to the convenience store to buy you snacks. I can't watch you stomach hospital food, I'll die just by looking at you." Yasu exclaimed, making efforts to force the two adults outside.

"Why do all three of us need to go?" Bou-san questioned.

"Oh just come!" Ayako dragged him out with Yasu, leaving Mai and Naru alone.

Mai looked over at Naru after a long silence and cleared her throat,

"Thank you for today, I appreciate it." Mai's eyes locked with Naru's,

"You need to be more careful Mai." Her former boss was being dead serious, Mai noticed. His voice was always monotone but after being around Naru for a long while, Mai had picked up on certain hints that indicated towards his feelings.

He was most definitely right though. If she told the truth, Mai had been scared to death. She didn't have the slightest clue what she would have done if Naru hadn't shown up. Mai had dealt with harassment by men before, but not four at once. However, she was more worried about the fact that she would be kicked off the case.

"Can I still come in for work tomorrow?" Mai knew what he would say, but she wanted to convince him otherwise.

"Absolutely not." The indigo-eyed man glared. "You will stay in this room until you are fully healed." Naru got up and strode over to the table next to Mai's bed and placed his empty tea mug on the table, his glare still prominent.

Mai looked up at Naru with pleading eyes,

"But it's been so long since I've been on a case! I promise I won't wander around, I'll stay in the base at all times and only go out with either you or Lin." Mai knew the protocol, it wasn't the first time she had been injured. She was hoping her boss would agree with her suggestions, but she didn't have expectations.

Naru eyed Mai for a few seconds and gave in,

"Fine," he sighed. "But if you go against any of those rules just know you're off the case and I'll make it so you're off the next couple cases as well."

Mai got up and hugged the lean man, "Thank you."

After a couple seconds of silence, the younger girl suddenly realized what she was doing and quickly let go of the still man, laughing the awkwardness off. Mai scratched her head, but her eyebrows suddenly twisted when she remembered his words.

"The next couple cases?" Mai eyed him in confusion. Her _former_ boss raised an eyebrow, and looked down at her. The brunette couldn't suppress the redness creeping on her cheeks as she noticed their closeness.

"Well, you're most definitely not working at that restaurant anymore. You will work when you are able, and be paid accordingly." Naru stated. Mai had to conceal the urge to hug him again and instead, she smiled widely.

Mai couldn't stop being thankful to him today.

* * *

 **Author's Note -** Mai keeps getting hurt I feel bad LOL. I'm really blank lately, I had this chapter mostly written for a long while but I didn't know how to end it off. This was kind of a sweet ending, I'd like to know your opinion on it. To the person that recommended Lin's perspective - I'm planning on adding it in the next chapter. Please review I would like some feedback and input about the story so far, thank you!


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